Day JFK Died We Traded Through Tears as NYSE Shut

Two young people sit in Lafayette Park, Washington, reading the newspaper reports of U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination, November 1963. Source: Keystone via Getty Images

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Fifty years ago today, on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange, Michael Robbins heard a murmur.
It started at the booth of a Texas firm, Eppler, Guerin & Turner
Inc., and got louder, until the 30-year-old trader realized what
it was: the sound of a selloff.

In the order room of Thomson McKinnon Securities Inc., a
21-year-old clerk named Arthur Cashin Jr. answered the ringing
phone. It was a broker on the exchange floor asking if any news
had come over the wire. He’d heard a rumor that something may
have happened to the U.S. president. Cashin told him no.

The Dow Jones & Co. news ticker machine in those days was
as big as a refrigerator. It chattered, then it spit out paper
with the latest breaking news. For special stories, such as
company earnings, a bell on the machine would ring. For
important economic data, the bell would ring twice. On Nov. 22,
1963, right after Cashin hung up with the trader, it rang three
times.

The day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in
Dallas was a day that changed so much. From Texas to the New
York Stock Exchange floor where, Robbins said in an interview,
the whole world was reflected, those who remember say they’ll
never forget.

That morning, just like every morning, Robbins said he
traded his jacket for the blazer he wore on the exchange floor.
Attached was his member number, 718. He put on comfortable
shoes. While today most of the exchange’s trades are executed by
computers in Mahwah, New Jersey, back then Robbins could walk
seven miles before quitting time. He would take orders on the
phone at the booths that ringed the trading floor, then buy and
sell shares at the dozens of posts where specialists oversaw
individual stocks, said Robbins, a Bloomberg News contributor
who was a floor trader for 40 years and also served on the
exchange’s board of directors.

Poker Games

Those days, the exchange was open from 10 a.m. to 3:30
p.m., leaving enough time after breakfast for a game of poker or
backgammon in the card room. Or a smoke in the smoking room.

That’s where Paul Ross, a 26-year-old trader, went on the
morning of Nov. 22, 1963. Ross said he drank a cup of coffee and
smoked a cigarette as he read his way through the Wall Street
Journal, the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune.

At 10 a.m., as the opening bell rang at the New York Stock
Exchange, the 46-year-old president greeted city leaders at a
breakfast in a Fort Worth ballroom. Later in the day, he was
scheduled to address a luncheon in Dallas. Kennedy had been good
for investors, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 19
percent between his inauguration and the start of November 1963.

Storage Tanks

Trading in New York was quiet that morning -- desultory,
Robbins said. Two days earlier, on Wednesday, Nov. 20, exchange
member Ira Haupt & Co. had been suspended from trading. The firm
had invested in storage tanks of vegetable oil, some of which
turned out to be filled with water, Ross said. The Dow slipped
1.3 percent that Thursday.

Ross said he thought there might be a turnaround on Friday.
He bought retailer E.J. Korvette. He bought camera maker
Polaroid Corp. and some Xerox Corp., which had just taken a
hammering, he said. He bought computer-maker Control Data Corp.

At 1:29 p.m. New York time, as the president’s car, on its
way to the luncheon, approached the Texas School Book Depository
in Dallas, Donald Stone, a 39-year-old trader for E.H. Stern &
Co., rode the elevator up to the Stock Exchange Luncheon Club
and ordered his usual: chicken salad.

Stone said he saw a guy running between the tables. He
stopped him. The guy said Kennedy’s been shot. Stone asked him
if he meant Jack, the president, or Bobby, the attorney general.
The guy said Jack.

Stone said he raced downstairs.

On the floor of the exchange, a clerk yelled, “The
president’s been shot!” The sound of selling grew into a roar.

Flap, Flap

In those days, the NYSE floor had two mechanical boards on
either end. They were called annunciator boards. The boards had
flaps. Whenever a phone order came in for a trader, a flap would
fall. The flap would have the trader’s number on it, the number
he wore on his blazer.

Floor traders had to train themselves to always keep an eye
on the board. If they were properly attuned, they could identify
their falling flap by the sound it made, said Robbins.

Walter N. Frank Sr., the vice chairman of the exchange at
the time, called it the worst avalanche of selling he’d ever
seen, according to an unpublished oral history kept by the
exchange. The Dow lost 21 points, or 2.9 percent, that day.

Board Meeting

Frank suggested calling an emergency board meeting,
according to the oral history. The president and chairman were
out of the building. Still, Frank said he and Ed Gray, the
executive vice president of the exchange, were able to gather a
quorum of the board at 1:55 p.m. They voted unanimously to halt
trading -- the first time, besides for bad weather or a civil
defense drill, since a parade for General Douglas MacArthur in
April 1951.

Meanwhile, a crowd had formed around the post where RCA
Corp. traded. Bill Meehan of M.J. Meehan & Co. was the
specialist. In those days, RCA was the hot technology stock. It
owned RCA Records and the NBC television network. It sold TVs
and radios. The traders were all trying to sell RCA shares. They
were pressing into Meehan. He was backed against his post.
Finally, he held out his arms, as Robbins described it, like the
statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro. I’ll give you $85
for everything you got, Meehan cried, according to Robbins and
Ross.

Eerie Hush

The orders surged in. Sell, sell, sell at $85 -- down $5.50
from its opening price that day.

Paul Ross said he was standing next to Robbins. “If it’s
good enough for Meehan, it’s good enough for me,” Ross told
him. Ross bought 500 shares of RCA at $85.

“Meehan had stopped the run,” Robbins said. “He was
heroic.”

The bell rang at 2:07 p.m. The exchange closed.

An eerie hush spread across the floor. From the 10 a.m.
opening till 2 p.m., 4.4 million shares had changed hands. In
the next seven minutes, 2.2 million shares were traded, Robbins
said. Within moments the thunder of the selloff had become a
stunned and grieving silence.

Robbins said he noticed J. Truman Bidwell. Bidwell had been
elected chairman of the exchange in May 1961. He’d resigned in
February 1962 after his indictment on charges of evading income
taxes. Bidwell had been acquitted in January 1963, but the case
had drained him of thousands of dollars in legal fees after he’d
refused to settle, said his son, J. Truman Bidwell Jr.

Shaken, Crying

Robbins said he admired the elder Bidwell. Thought he was
the leading broker on the floor. Always beautifully dressed.
Elegant. He was sitting on a fold-out chair. A man who’d been
through so much. And he was crying.

Donald Stone, too, was shaken. He said he hadn’t thought
the exchange would close early. He’d bought a lot of stock
figuring he could unload it before 3:30 p.m. When the bell
sounded at 2:07, he owned more than he thought his firm could
bear.

Stone said he walked the short distance from the exchange
to the office of E.H. Stern. He took the elevator to the 12th
floor. He said he felt sick. Stone said he was sure he’d brought
down the entire firm.

When he came in the door, Eddie Stern saw him. What’s the
matter, kid, Stern asked him. You look pale.

“I felt pale,” Stone said. “I said I didn’t think they’d
stop trading. I thought I’d have time to lighten my positions.
The stocks I bought were down and I bought a lot of them.”

Scotch Shot

Stern motioned him over, according to Stone. He opened a
desk drawer. He took out a bottle of Scotch and a shot glass.
Drink, he said.

Stone said he was not in the habit of drinking during
working hours. On Nov. 22, 1963, he knocked one back.

Relax, Stern told him. You’ll come out alright.

“It was only then that I realized he wouldn’t fire me,”
Stone said. Stone went on to serve as vice chairman of the New
York Stock Exchange.

At 2:33 p.m. New York time, Malcolm Kilduff, the acting
White House press secretary, made the official announcement.
Minutes later, an emotional Walter Cronkite relayed the news on
CBS TV: “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official:
President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m., Central Standard Time, two
o’clock, Eastern Standard Time -- some 38 minutes ago.”

Tragedy Aftermath

All weekend, as Paul Ross watched the aftermath of the
tragedy on TV, he went over his stock positions in his mind.
He’d bought RCA at $85. Ross said he thought maybe he was wrong
to follow Meehan. Maybe Meehan had led him over a cliff.

Ross needn’t have worried. RCA opened the next trading day
at $89.75, according to the New York Times.

That Monday, the exchange was closed for John F. Kennedy’s
funeral. Cashin, the clerk for Thomson McKinnon, had volunteered
to come into work. There was data to process because people had
left early on Friday. It was quiet. A friend called and
suggested they meet for lunch at the Downtown Athletic Club,
according to Cashin, who 50 years later is the dean of floor
traders at the exchange.

In the club’s third-floor dining room, every TV was tuned
to the funeral. When the flag-draped coffin appeared on the
screen, an older man stood up and raised his glass.

Ladies and gentlemen, the old man said, I give you the
president of the United States.